Jonathan – Mu’azu: 2015 The intrigues, power play

It was a sigh of relief for a visibly bewildered nation Thursday morning when the rumour of the purported resignation of the national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, turned out to be a hoax. The rumours hovered around Tuesday night and heightened on Wednesday, while the party’s National Executive Committee […]

It was a sigh of relief for a visibly bewildered nation Thursday morning when the rumour of the purported resignation of the national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, turned out to be a hoax.
The rumours hovered around Tuesday night and heightened on Wednesday, while the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) held a closed-door meeting in Abuja.
A Facebook account was emphatic that Mu’azu would hand over his resignation letter at the NEC emergency meeting which was primarily called for that purpose. However, as it turned out the next day, no such thing happened. The party’s national publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh had to come out with a statement debunking the rumour, adding though that such insinuations were not unusual.
However, Metuh’s statement was more of praises for President Goodluck Jonathan rather than addressing the alleged frosty relationship between his boss and the presidency.  
Metuh said the party was impressed with the quality of leadership President Jonathan was providing Nigerians in all spheres and that “the PDP is proud of his leadership.”
Apparently, the crux of the matter was not whether the president had performed, but that the party under Mu’azu was not selling the president’s supposed giant strides to the electorates enough to attract their votes in the impending elections.
The anti-Mu’azu forces within the PDP have made this the sing-song which they chorused loudly at every event. The chorus is growing even louder as the election dates draw closer with the anti-Mu’azu elements spreading their tentacles even to his home-state of Bauchi.
Just last Wednesday, concerned elders and chieftains of the party from Bauchi accused the national chairman of not doing enough for the president’s re-election bid. They alleged that Mu’azu has his own secret agenda other than Jonathan’s re-election.
The elders in a statement signed by Alhaji Bibi Dogo, warned the president not to rely on the national chairman to deliver the mandatory 25 percent to him in the forthcoming election in Bauchi, saying Mu’azu had not done enough to empower stakeholders in the state.
“There is also nothing concrete on ground to show Mu’azu’s personal commitment to the Jonathan re-election efforts. Attending presidential campaign rallies organised by PDP presidential campaign organisation is not enough commitment from the national chairman of the party. In fact, to govern a state for eight years under the same party is enough for Mu’azu to deliver Bauchi to Jonathan 100 percent, if actually Mu’azu is in control of the party in his state,” they said.
However, a political associate of Mu’azu, Alhaji Sani Toro, in a swift reaction, denied the allegations saying: “Mu’azu has met with stakeholders and whoever that matters in Bauchi twice and sought support for the re-election of Jonathan and other PDP candidates.”
Observers were surprised that such anti-Mu’azu stance would emanate from a state where he held sway for eight years as governor and leader of the party. PDP followers were yet to get over the shock from the Bauchi office when the presidential campaign organisation in Abuja dropped another bombshell on Thursday, accusing Mu’azu of not doing enough to sell Jonathan to the Nigerian public.
Speaking at the training programme for “Operation Deliver Your Ward” in Abuja, the organisation’s deputy director, Prof. Tunde Adeniran, said the party should not hide the achievements the present administration has made in the country in order to boost Jonathan’s chances at the polls.
He said Jonathan’s achievements ought to have been the focus of the party long before now in order that by now, Jonathan’s image and vision would have spoken for him rather than individuals.  
“So don’t pretend about President Jonathan’s achievements, the stage we are in now is to transmit positive messages to the people, especially at the grassroots level. We are going to train about 600,000 people. This is not an afterthought anyway. It is an on-going thing. We believe that our people should be trained up to the very end. New situations breed new ideas,” he said.
Even stakeholders were miffed at such open confrontation among stakeholders just two weeks to the elections. “It is unfortunate that this should be coming at this important point of our electioneering campaign; just two weeks into the main elections. We are playing into the opposition’s hand,” a party stakeholder and member of its board of trustees told Weekly Trust by phone yesterday.
The source said the presidential campaign organisation was wrong to have publicly attacked the party’s chairman like that for whatever reason: “We are supposed to shelve our differences for the overall benefit of the party; after our victory we can as well meet to resolve them.”
However, not many party stakeholders would like to wait until the battle is fought and won to share the spoils. “It’s all about the power struggle within,” the source said and alleged that “the campaign fund is at the centre” of the current altercation which many fear will consume the chairman.
“The campaign committee is usurping the powers of the national chairman because they are controlling the campaign funds. Unfortunately they seem to have the president’s ears having sold a dummy about Mu’azu not being a loyal party man to him. The crisis is quite deep and beyond what is circulating in the media,” our source added.
He would however, not lead Weekly Trust into the details for “security reasons,” but Mu’azu’s travails have been long in public domain. But beyond what is in the open, Weekly Trust learnt that the presidency has been suspicious of Mu’azu for nurturing presidential ambition on the PDP platform and was forced to drop his interest when the president eventually decided to run. With his ambition thwarted, he was said to have discussed with the president the possibility of becoming his running mate in place of Vice President Namadi Sambo.
A competent source told Weekly Trust that despite Jonathan showing Mu’azu a written document that notable northern elders preferred Sambo to any other candidate, the PDP national chairman reportedly told the president that he could have stood his ground based on their discussion and that majority of the so-called elders were not core PDP members.
 The national chairman, Weekly Trust also gathered, fell out with those who matter having voiced out his opposition to the harsh strategies of the presidential campaign organisation, especially the publicity and mobilisation committees, which were to soften the ground for his 2019 ambition, especially in the north.
Mu’azu reportedly told the president at a meeting attended by Chief Edwin Clark and Chief Tony Anenih that the rough tactics, hate campaign and mudslinging against the opposition, especially APC presidential candidate General Muhammadu Buhari, were rather harming the interest of the PDP and President Jonathan based on the reactions of Nigerians at home and abroad, particularly on the social media.
He was however, said to have been countered by Anenih who reportedly said the strategy was working as it was exposing opposition bigwigs and were not necessarily attacks on Buhari.
Also, the activities of the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) led by Dr. Chris Uba, were initially acceptable to the PDP leadership until some members of the National Working Committee (NWC) protested that they were hijacking the party machinery in some states to the discomfort of the state governors and other party stalwarts.
Mu’azu reportedly conveyed the feelings of NWC members to Jonathan who initially refused to drop his support for TAN and said since they were not sponsored by the government, they should be allowed to support his administration and by extension the PDP, until some of the governors “formally protested” to the president leading to TAN’s unofficial disbanding.
However, TAN seems to have bounced back under the Dr. Ahmadu Ali led Presidential Campaign Committee, with many of its members making the campaign committee list and using the strategies known with TAN.
With the development the national chairman was totally sidelined in matters involving the party’s campaign.
Weekly Trust learnt that Ali, Anenih and Clark ensured that the national chairman gets the cold shoulders from the presidency.
Another reliable source within the party told Weekly Trust that one of the issues leading to “whatever it is now” is that President Jonathan after the sale of expression of interest and nomination forms in 2014, instructed the PDP national leadership not to use the money for whatever purpose, but keep it until after the polls, a development which threw Mu’azu and other party officials in a state of confusion.
The source said the huge amount of money raised from the sale of forms has been kept on the instructions of President Jonathan while some national officials expected that the money would be immediately used for other projects that would benefit them and the party.
He alleged that Mu’azu has not made extra efforts to win support for Jonathan in Bauchi apart from the normal general campaign trail which stormed the state recently but witnessed disgusting actions of the citizens as they pelted stones at the president’s convoy.
According to him, Jonathan may have expected the former governor to do more, especially considering the circumstances which brought him (Mu’azu) into office.          
“For now I can’t say there is a serious problem between Mr. President and the national chairman of our great party; but I must tell you that they are bound to disagree on some issues. During the inauguration of the PDP presidential campaign organisation at Legacy House, Mu’azu made an uncomplimentary appeal which I believe was not right at that time. He was asking Mr. President to address the injustice in the party,” the source noted.
“This means that a lot of things have happened in the past or are still happening not the way they should, for the national chairman of the ruling party to say this. I think there are serious issues on ground. He has never organised any rally on his own and has never attended any other except those organised by the party which were attended by the President,” he added.
“He has remained silent on the stoning of the president’s convoy in Bauchi, his home state, Katsina and other states in the north. We have this unclear notion that he is more interested in having a president from his region than President Jonathan returning,” he said.
But many have commended the chairman for his position on the discontent within the party. They said Mu’azu was right to have told the president to address the apparent misgivings if the party must make significant impact in the coming elections.
Mu’azu had during the inauguration of Jonathan’s campaign organisation, called on the president not to use and dump party members if the PDP must move forward.
“Mr. President, I want to appeal to you to consider it a challenge to discuss with your governors, Senators and all elected officials of PDP that members of our party shouldn’t be used and dumped. Adhere to equity, fairness and justice.
“Some members of our great party, the PDP have left us because of lack of equity, fairness and justice. They have left because of injustice at one state or the other and we must address this issue,” Mu’azu said during the inauguration.
Beyond the current development, the choice of Mu’azu as the party’s chairman did not go down well within the presidency and key people close to the president like Clark and Dame Patient Jonathan, who reportedly had their preferred candidates.
It was learnt that it was the governors that insisted that Mu’azu be made chairman above all other candidates. Clark has been critical of Mu’azu from the very beginning.
Clark, had on January 17, 2015, accused Mu’azu of misinforming President Jonathan on issues concerning the party. He was miffed at the imposition of a former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, on the party in Adamawa State as its governorship candidate and alleged that Mu’azu misinformed the president on the popularity of the former anti-graft tsar.
Clark and some stakeholders also blamed Mu’ázu for the crisis that trailed the party’s ward congresses and primaries across the country.
Analysts believe that the party should address its grievances after the elections if it must win the coming elections.
Weekly Trust gathered that the aim would have been to remove Mu’azu as the party’s national chairman ahead of the polls but considering that the elections are just two weeks away, it will be  interesting to see how the ‘game changer’ changes or maintains the status quo after March 28.